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Saturday, February 23, 2013

Exploring the Commandments Part 5-Sabbaths and Feasts

For the backstory of what this blog series is on and why it has been written, check out part 1 and part 2 of the series. The
original list of all 613 commandments in their textual order that I used came from the site Hebrew4Christians. <http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Articles/Taryag/taryag.html>

Shabbat
(or the Sabbath) is a day of rest. We aren’t to work on the Shabbat or leave
home for food (what? Not Sunday restaurant days?). We are to keep the Sabbath
holy. I have spent several blog posts exploring the Sabbath, which you can see
here and here.

# 3 Commandments Concerning Sabbath/Shabbat : When I sorted the commandments, I came up with 5 about Sabbath.

I’m
not going into a lot of detail about the feasts of the Lord, not because I
don’t think they’re important, but because I am planning on going WAY more
in-depth with them in another blog series. In short, there are 7 feasts of the
Lord dictated in Scripture: 3 are Pilgrim feasts when people were to travel to
the Jerusalem temple. Some feasts were actually fasts and others were special
days of rest. 1) Sukkot (Tabernacles), 2) Pesach (Passover), 3) Chag Matzah
(Unleavened Bread), 4) Rosh Hashanah (Festival of Trumpets), 5) Yom Kippur (Day
of Atonement), 6) Unknown Feast (Feast of First Fruits), and 7) Shavu’ot
(Pentecost) are the seven feasts. There’s also Purim and Hanukkah, but who’s
counting?

#
4 Commandments Concerning the Feasts
of the Lord: When
I sorted the commandments, I came up with 72 about the Feasts of the Lord. (I plan to go into more depth into all the feasts & fasts at a later date)

1. In general, we are to rejoice and celebrate during the 3 Pilgrim feasts (Deut. 16:14)

3. Passover was so important that if someone couldn’t celebrate it due to uncleanness, there was a make-up Passover (Numbers 9:11)

4. Feasts such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur (which was actually a fasting day Leviticus 23:27), Sukkot, Chag Matzah, and the Feast of Weeks were to have extra rest days (Leviticus 23:7-8, 23:21, 23:24, 23:32, 23:34-35)

5. Sabbath Year: The land was to have a Sabbath rest every 7 years (Exodus 23:11). When Israel didn’t obey this command, they were sent into captivity until the land had rested. Debts were to be released (Deut. 15:3)

6. Jubilee Year: every 50 years (as tracked by the govt.-Leviticus 25:8), there was to be a year of Jubilee. This was never practiced.